


Six Adventures McCoy Could Have Lived Without (and One He Didn't Mind So Much)

by therev



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 14:46:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13102395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: You'll have to decide which is which. Re-imagining TOS adventures  for the Reboot crew, with a Spock/McCoy twist. (Admittedly, more like "dialogue" than "adventures".) My one story for 2017!





	Six Adventures McCoy Could Have Lived Without (and One He Didn't Mind So Much)

A reflection of the firelight danced in the mirrored surface of the pool in the cave floor, the only place ice would melt on that planet, in that time. McCoy watched it, the flicker and wave of it, wondered if he'd ever see a river or stream running wild again, then dipped his hands in and drank from them.

"I guess prehistoric bacteria is the least of my worries at this point," he said to himself and there was an echo, even though he'd barely spoken above a whisper. 

"That water has been sterilized, Doctor," Spock said as he entered the cave, followed by a woman, Zarabeth, both of them heavily clothed in furs dusted with snow from the storm. Between them they carried an eviscerated animal carcass on a pike, about the size of a large dog. 

"Lucky me, I guess," McCoy shot back, "that I'll live a long and healthy life, five thousand years away from everything and everyone I've ever known and loved." He pulled his own furs up around him. The cold had done a number on his extremities when they had first arrived in this planet's ice age. He was only just beginning to feel his feet again.

Spock and Zarabeth laid the animal on a slab and she set to it with a crude stone knife while Spock began divesting himself of the confusing tangle of stitched-together furs.

"I wasn't aware that you loved anything or anyone, Doctor," he said, and came nearer to the fire, to another pool of water meant for washing.

"I might eventually, Mr. Spock. I'd like to have that option." He watched Zarabeth's back as she beared down on the cutting tool. There was a sickening crack. He looked away.

"I have been thinking on our predicament," Spock said, rinsing his bloody hands in the pool, "and I believe I have come upon a possible solution."

"Well it's about time."

Spock did not react to the dig and McCoy felt a little disappointed by that. Spock had been more than usually removed in that barren, ancient place. 

"As the tricorder was recording data when we mistakenly came through the atavachron, it is possible that reproducing the frequency of the portal sequencer may re-open it, provided that we are able to once again find its exact location."

"That's a long shot, isn't it? We could barely see our hands in front of our faces. I could hardly think for the cold."

Spock motioned slightly toward Zarabeth behind him. "I believe she knows the location."

"She says we can't go back," McCoy whispered, even though, without the tricorder translating, Zarabeth could not understand them.

"She is lying. I believe that she herself cannot return--you will recall Mr. Atoz insisting that we be "prepared" for our journey--I think that she is lonely, and deceitful."

"I dunno," McCoy said, "she seems sweet enough." There was another cracking sound, the tear of a tendon, and blood spattered on the cave walls where Zarabeth stood.

Spock raised a brow.

"Say, who killed that beast anyway?" McCoy asked.

"I did," Spock said, without any particular inflection.

"Is that, I mean, is that kosher? For a Vulcan?"

Spock stood, tall and dark in his black undershirt, his cheeks red from the cold and the fire. He wiped his wet hands on his pants legs, and the pool of water, when McCoy looked at it, was red with blood and gore.

"Needs must, I believe is the saying, Doctor. Necessity compels me. We must survive. You must have your strength back. There is nothing else."

McCoy swallowed drily. "Just, out of curiosity, you're not feeling any other primitive urges are you, Mr. Spock?"

Spock raised a brow, sat beside where McCoy lay on their stone and fur bed. He looked like his usual self again suddenly. "Is there a particular reason that I should?"

"Oh, I don't know. We're five thousand years in the past. Aren't your distant ancestors out there bashing each other's skulls open right about now?"

"They are."

"And?"

"And you assume that because I've been transported to another point in history, to a place millions of light years from my home planet, that I will spontaneously be affected by the behavior of my far-removed progenitors more than I was twenty-four hours ago?"

"Well… maybe?"

Spock shook his head. "That is an absurd notion even for you, Doctor."

That night they slept all three together, as they had every night for warmth. Somehow McCoy was always in the middle. At first it was argued that he needed the warmth most, but he was beginning to suspect it was more about Spock's reluctance to sleep next to Zarabeth. She had already propositioned him several times, quite boldly, and McCoy had learned that Vulcans did sometimes blush, and blushed green.

He lay on his back, watching the fire dance across the craggy ceiling of the cave. To his left, Zarabeth breathed evenly, to his right, Spock's back, warm and solid, moving rhythmically as well, but not in the almost imperceptible way that McCoy had come to learn meant that he was asleep. 

"Where do you think Jim is?" he asked softly. Zarabeth did not stir.

"I am as ignorant of his whereabouts as you are, Doctor," Spock said, just as quietly.

"Knowing him, he landed in the middle of a party of naked aliens."

"Or a battle."

McCoy laughed, "Yeah, maybe both."

The fire crackled and spit but otherwise the cave was quiet. Even the wind no longer howled outside.

"The Captain is very capable," Spock said after a long moment, and after a longer moment when McCoy did not reply, he said, "Doctor?"

"Yeah, Spock?"

"You should rest."

Days later, McCoy stepped out into the snow, his feet warm and with all their previous feeling. They had waited for the storm to pass but the soft, white powder was up to his knees, crunching loudly beneath his boots and the animal skin covering they'd strapped over them. Ahead of him, Zarabeth forded the way. Her slim figure hidden beneath layers of hides. Behind him, he could hear the noise of Spock following them. It had taken some convincing and the gift of a phaser, but Zarabeth did at last admit that she knew the location of the portal, and that she did not know if they could return, only that she could not.

The portal was a sheer rock face, grey and unyielding. Spock fussed with tricorder knobs, McCoy looked over his shoulder but tried not to get in the way. The battery was very low. This was their only chance. Zarabeth had already said her goodbyes.

"This had better work," McCoy said.

"That is an unnecessary observation, Doctor. But I believe I have the frequency."

"Nothing looks different."

"I'm not certain that it will."

"Jim? Are you there?" McCoy shouted at the wall and it echoed off of the mountain. No one answered. Spock looked at him and frowned. He shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

Spock reached out, touched the rock. It did not yield.

"Damn," McCoy said.

"Perhaps I have miscalculated."

"Maybe," McCoy said, stepping closer to stand next to Spock, "and while nothing would make me happier than to prove you wrong," he added, and reached out too, fingers next to Spock's, "maybe you've just left out one variable…" the rock yielded. Their fingers disappeared beyond the surface of the stone. McCoy smiled and grabbed Spock by the arm, pulling him closer. "What was it you said when we got here, Mr. Spock?"

"We go together or not at all," Spock said, and to McCoy's great satisfaction, very nearly smiled.  
___

The real trouble with the creatures, McCoy thought, wasn't just that a third of the crew was allergic to them, but that they were so damned cute, no one minded much.

"Put that thing down, ensign," he said to the young engineer still cuddling one on in his pocket, even as he scratched at the raw, red spot just under his ear. "Aren't all of those supposed to be headed to the incinerator?"

The ensign looked horrified and stuffed the furry creature a little farther into his pocket.

"Transporter, Doctor," Spock said from somewhere over his shoulder, apparently having just entered the room to spoil his fun. "As you know, there is no incinerator on the ship. We will be orbiting the tribble home planet momentarily."

"Thank God," McCoy said and pushed the hypospray into the relieved ensign's bare arm and shooed him off of the table. "I don't know how many more--what in the blue blazes happened to you?!"

McCoy had turned to find Spock's face covered in purple splotches.

Spock raised a brow. "I have been overseeing the collection and containment of the tribbles, and although I had not previously presented with symptoms, prolonged or excessive exposure has triggered a latent allergy."

"Allergy," McCoy snorted, "that looks more like the plague. I haven't seen a case this bad besides Jim's." He grabbed Spock by the arm and pulled him toward the biobed. Spock went without complaint.

"No fever," McCoy said as he waved the scanner over Spock. "Any burning sensation?"

"None."

"Difficulty breathing?"

"Not at this time."

"But at another time?"

"No."

"Then why'd you say it that way, dammit? How about itching?"

"What about it, Doctor?"

"Are. You. Itching. Spock?"

"Yes. Doctor."

"How badly?"

"It is tolerable."

"Tolerable for a human or tolerable for a Vulcan?"

"As I have never been entirely either, I cannot answer with any certainty."

McCoy sighed, put away his scanner. He rocked on the balls of his feet. 

"On a scale of one to ten, one being an over-starched uniform, ten being the sting of a Venusian volcano ant, where does your level of discomfort fall, Commander?"

Spock did not hesitate, and that told McCoy as much as the answer, or Spock's suddenly clenched teeth.

"Nine-point-five," Doctor."

"Christ, Spock, why didn't you say sooner?" He stepped to the door of the exam room, shouted to Christine that she was in charge, to which she replied 'I know,' closed the door and set the clear walls to opaque to give his patient some privacy. He pulled something out of a cabinet in the wall and handed it to Spock. "Strip. Put this on. I'll be right back."

When he returned to find Spock sitting in the gown on the biobed, he was a little surprised the order had been followed. Spock must have really been in misery, and it was no wonder. On every inch of exposed skin he was an angry purple blotch. The gown was quite short and the marks traveled up his legs, from the neckline up into his hairline, and as far up the arms as McCoy could see. Under the harsh light, Spock looked both incredibly vulnerable and somehow larger out of uniform. 

"I'm gonna dose you with this," McCoy said, holding up a hypospray, "but it will take a while to work, and you may become drowsy, or not, who knows." Spock frowned, but McCoy held up another vial. "But this salve will help a lot sooner."

Spock reached for it. McCoy pulled it away.

"You tell me where to start," he said, and went to another cabinet and snapped on a glove. He fully expected Spock to say that he would wait for the dosage to take effect, that even a profound itch was only of the mind, but instead he quietly turned his back to McCoy, and pulled the strings of the gown to expose the skin there.

McCoy would have smirked if he hadn't felt a pang of guilt for considering it. Spock would not have come to him except at great need, and the broad shoulders were a maze of angry, purple welts. 

"Why the devil did you wait so long, Spock?" McCoy asked, and squeezed some of the salve onto his gloved fingers. 

"I did not realize--" Spock began to say and stopped as McCoy touched the first of the marks. He did not moan, but the way he hung his head and gripped the edge of the biobed suggested it. The salve was cold, the plant derivative required refrigeration, but the coolness of it also provided additional, immediate relief to the patient. Spock was no exception. 

"Yeah, I know," McCoy said to cover up the slip in Spock's composure. "Too busy taking care of the ship to take care of yourself."

"It is my job," Spock said with renewed calm, though he leaned into McCoy's touch and McCoy let him, rubbing almost has hard as a massage. 

"And it's my job to make sure that you can continue to do it."

"The symptoms progressed very suddenly."

"I won't argue with that," McCoy said, and proceeded down to Spock's slim waste. Spock arched his back suddenly as McCoy touched him, just a little, just for a moment, but McCoy had caught it. He knew. Spock was not only itching like the dickens, he was ticklish, too.

It wasn't often that McCoy treated Spock, that was usually M'Benga's job, but M'Benga had been on personal leave for weeks now, just in time to avoid this tribble nonsense. So McCoy didn't already know that Spock was ticklish around his sides, that he had a birthmark on his right hip, and moles dotting his back and chest. 

"You know, this wouldn't have happened if you hadn't spent so much time cuddling those infernal animals."

"I assure you, there was no cuddling."

"Vulcans don't cuddle?"

"That is not what I said."

"Well that's good to know. I hate to think of all those Vulcan children running around spouting their logic and not getting cuddled."

"Vulcan children are sufficiently cared for, regardless of physical interaction."

"Is that your way of saying your father didn't hug you enough?"

Spock sighed, from frustration or from McCoy's hands on him, it was hard to tell. But McCoy kept up the banter, trying to keep Spock distracted, from either the itching or the relief of it, or the indignity of being in his underwear on an exam table, until Spock slowly, silently, drifted to sleep, lying on his stomach as McCoy applied the salve to the backs of his legs. McCoy finished without another word, had a brief thought about how sleep could make even the sternest countenance seem childlike, and then covered Spock with a sheet and went on to the next patient.

When his shift was over, McCoy helped to see that the last of the tribbles made it off of the ship at last, since he was one of the few senior officers immune to their dander. When the last of them had gone there was a quiet moment of sadness amongst the transporter crew, until McCoy shouted at them to get the hell over it, and began organizing shipwide sterilization of air systems, carpeting, laundry, and especially the food synthesizer.

He ran into Spock in the hallway on D deck, looking his usual shade of slightly green-pink, not a purple blot to be seen.

"How's that itch, Commander?" he asked. 

"Fully resolved, Doctor, thank you."

"Just doing my job. Maybe now you'll admit that I'm of some use to this bucket of bolts hurtling toward dangers and allergens unknown." He smiled and rocked on his feet.

"Doctor McCoy," Spock said, and squinted at him, turning his head to one side as if inspecting something about McCoy's face. "I believe you have succumbed to the allergen after all."

McCoy frowned. "That's impossible, I'm not--" He touched his face. His neck. "Dammit," he said, and hurried to the nearest comm panel, to the camera there, to look himself over, beneath his collar, under his hairline. Nothing. No spots. No itch. Behind him, he could see Spock walking away. 

"That's not funny, Spock!" he shouted.

Over his shoulder, Spock replied coolly, "My mistake, Doctor."  
_____

The air was different so far underground, McCoy could taste it, dust and silicate and who knew what else mixing with the piped-in oxygen. They should all be wearing respirators. Why the devil weren't they wearing respirators? 

Spock knelt next to something that Jim had told him was his patient. McCoy looked down at it and frowned. It was stony and reddish and sort of bubbly. It wriggled and shuddered. Spock did not speak.

"I thought this thing was supposed to be dangerous?" McCoy asked Spock quietly, realizing somehow that the moment required it. He shuffled carefully over the rocky floor of the cavern, hunched over to avoid the low ceiling, and tried not to think of the miles and miles of rock above them, or how easily they could be trapped and buried there.

Spock looked up, still touching the creature, his eyes raw and pained. "I have communicated to the Horta that you are no danger to her, Doctor."

"Her, huh?" he asked, feeling a pang for Spock and pushing it aside. The Vulcan had his own work to do. "Well do you know where she's hurt, Mr. Spock?"

"Is it not obvious?"

McCoy did not reply that no, it was not, and knelt at what he thought was the back of the creature. There was a place there that seemed scorched and broken, hot to the touch when he probed there. She shuddered.

"What's obvious, Mr. Spock, is that this creature is terrified. I don't know what all the fuss is about. Devil in the dark, my backside."

"You discern much from a touch, Doctor," Spock said softly.

"Of course I do. I'm a doctor not a--" the tricorder whirred in his hands, "well what is she made of anyway?" 

"Silicon-based."

"Good lord, none of my devices are calibrated for that. I'd have to--" he snapped his fingers, loud in the deep quiet, and both Spock and the Horta jumped. "Sorry," he said, then called the ship to beam down supplies.

The polymer putty was meant to patch atmosphere bleeds in ship hulls and it spread like mortar, gritty and quick-drying, but it did the job as well as any dermal regenerator. 

"I don't know about you," McCoy said to Spock when he stood and held up his hands to keep from getting the stuff on him otherwise, "but I'm beginning to think I could cure a rainy day."

Spock raised a brow in disagreement, still petting the Horta's rough head, but he looked better, not so pale or pained. "She is feeling much better, Doctor, she thanks you. However, I do not believe that even your skills might effectively alter the weather."

They orbited the planet for several days after, as the first of the silicon nodules that turned out to be her eggs began to hatch. The Horta seemed to take a particular liking to him as he assisted several hatchlings out of their shells.

"You've gotta admit the little ones are kind of cute," he said to Spock, gently pushing aside a piece the broken and iridescent shell, a little too like the sort of rubber ball that Joanna once kicked around the back yard. A small pinkish thing unfurled in his hands, its thousand tiny limbs waving. It would not begin to develop the stony outer layer for another forty-eight hours. Next to him, its mother watched him--or whatever it did without eyes--carefully.

"Cuteness is irrelevant, Doctor," Spock said, scanning yet another hatchling, hunched over thousands of the little creatures skittering over the rocky floor.

"You and I both know that's nonsense, Spock. From birds to bees to sycamore trees, attraction is a huge part of the life cycle. Well, maybe not sycamore trees, I don't know why those get lumped in there."

"Agreed, however, the Horta are blind. They 'see' by touch, primarily vibrations in the rock, the perception of sound waves, the--" Several of the hatchlings climbed up Spock's pants legs and he lost his balance. He fell to his backside and one hatchling came squeezing out from under him, unharmed. It ran to McCoy and its mother.

"Yes, but maybe one Horta's vibrations are more attractive than another's," McCoy said.

"Also irrelevant as the horta are asexual."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Are you listening to this?" he asked the Horta. She only shuddered and ruffled and stroked at one of her babies.

"She cannot hear you, Doctor," Spock said from where he sat on the ground, having given up trying to get back to his feet.

McCoy rolled his eyes. "I suppose now you're going to tell me that on Vulcan attraction is only ever about procreation. That it's illogical to like the look of somebody unless you're prepared to settle down and buy a house in the suburbs and make a bunch of little Vulcans." He paused and smiled. "Do they have mini-vans where you're from, Mr. Spock?"

Spock frowned, holding one of the hatchlings with its tiny limbs waving helplessly in the air. He seemed to be deep in thought. McCoy was about to ask him the matter.

"I retract my statement," Spock said suddenly, and placed the hatchling back down with its sisters, then continued calmly, voice low. "You are correct that the goal of procreation is not the only factor in attraction, in the same way that attraction is not required for procreation, and while I still feel that it has no bearing on the Horta's reproductive processes, attraction is, in fact, quite relevant in both human and Vulcan species."

McCoy swallowed. He wasn't sure why his mouth felt suddenly dry, or why the air seemed so much closer. The Horta shivered next to him, as if in anticipation of something. He cleared his throat. Spock blinked brown eyes at him.

"Glad we got that cleared up, Mr. Spock."  
____

The hazy, rose-colored atmosphere of Taurus II was a little shy of the optimal amount of oxygen for a human, enough to survive on, but not enough to enjoy it. Not that there was much to enjoy about Taurus II.

From somewhere over the ridge, McCoy could hear Spock shouting, and that strange rumble-click that meant the giant cavemen they were calling Taureans were out and about. McCoy climbed over the next crag in the rock he was scaling, gasping for air from the effort and low oxygen. At last, the creature came into view below, Spock too, calling out to get the beast’s attention. McCoy shifted to get a better look and his tricorder swung around off of his shoulder, smacking loudly against the rock. The Taurean looked up.

“Damn,” McCoy said, ducked, and he could hear Spock firing his phaser below. The Taurean wailed. That was McCoy’s cue. He stood again to see over the rock, and aimed his tricorder at the Taurean, scanning its resistance to the phaser blast. When he had what he needed he motioned to Spock to make his escape, and clambered down the stony rockface, mostly on his backside.

Back at the Galileo, he and Spock leaned over the tricorder as Scotty made repairs and Boma and Yeoman Mears buried Gaetano somewhere near enough for safety, far enough that McCoy couldn't hear Boma’s whining.

“I had to set the sensitivity to maximum due to distance, so we’ll have to account for that,” McCoy said, punching the data into the tricorder.

“I believe my previous estimates of its weight and size were incorrect by roughly six percent,” Spock added, and pressed another button.

McCoy side-eyed him. They were too close for eye-rolling to be effective. “Roughly, Mr. Spock? Are we so desperate as to throw accuracy clean out the window?”

“Perhaps you would like to repeat the experiment from my point of view and collect your own data?”

McCoy grumbled and went back to his tricorder. Spock was even less fun than the thin atmosphere.

“That is our answer,” Spock said when the machine beeped. “Setting the phasers to this level should stun the creatures for several hours, while leaving them alive.”

“Too bad they weren’t as considerate of Gaetano or Latimer.”

“It is irrelevant what consideration we have received. If the Galileo Seven may escape without undue violence, we must avoid it.”

“Undue?” McCoy spat. “I don’t like violence any more than the next guy, but two crewmen are dead, and you... you cold-hearted–”

“Your ire will not facilitate our escape, Doctor,” Spock said calmly. “I suggest we proceed with the plan.” He stood, stooped by the low ceiling of the craft, and disappeared into the pink daylight. McCoy counted to ten before following him.

Hours later they lifted off, crouching or lying around the craft as the chairs had been sacrificed for weight, g-force making their limbs and head heavy. When they reached orbit and everyone could move again, Scotty said they only had forty-five minutes to chase the Enterprise and try to get home, forty-five minutes before their orbit would begin to decay and all seventy-three metric tons of them would crash to the planet’s surface. There was silence. McCoy looked to Spock, as all of them had during that mission, with respect or frustration, and always anticipation of a solution. He caught Spock's eye for a brief moment, then Spock turned and reached for something on the console.

A whoosh, a sudden lurch in the ship, as the last of their fuel jettisoned into space and ignited, blossoming into twin green trails of flame.

Boma and Mears cried betrayal, but Scotty assured them it had been a good move, their best hope to be seen by the Enterprise through the shroud of the quasar. 

They waited. Six minutes now, before orbit decay. 

McCoy floated over to where Spock hovered near the console, touching the ceiling to stay in place. Gravity had been decreasing since their fuel was depleted and their thrust diminished.

"What are our odds, Commander?" McCoy asked softly, feeling rather bad about his outburst earlier.

Spock seemed to know he didn't expect an answer. He was watching Boma, who kept glancing over his shoulder at Spock, as if Spock would skin and eat him alive at any moment. 

"I do not understand, Doctor. I have made the correct decision at every turn, the decision with the greatest odds of survival for the entire crew, and yet, somehow, they have all been wrong."

McCoy shrugged, the movement made him bob a little and he touched the console. "I don't know, the five of us are still here. You got us off of the planet."

"Likely a moot point as High Commissioner Farris may have already ordered the Enterprise to continue to Makus III by now, we have lost two crewmembers, and several others nearly mutinied, yourself included."

"Who me?" McCoy said, all innocence. "Not a chance. I hate command. Most people do. Too stressful. Take Boma," he nodded in that direction. Boma was muttering to Mears. "That guy couldn't lead a parade of marching clowns without crumbling under the pressure."

"Clowns?" 

"It's not your decisions, Spock, it's your attitude."

Spock frowned, brows drawn together into one dark squiggle. "My attitude is perfectly adequate for a commanding officer."

McCoy gestured to the crew. "Do you think they'd say the same?

"I do not require a crew's approval to lead efficiently." 

"Not their approval, Mr. Spock, but a little display of humanity, however you loathe the term, never went amiss."

"You mean panic."

"I mean we nearly died, and there you were, bored with the whole business. Weren't you frustrated to be stuck on that planet or in this contraption? Weren't you afraid for your life or ours down there?"

"I defended my life, Doctor. As well as everyone else's."

"Why? Moral obligation to a shipmate?" His voice was rising. He paused, breathed, said his next words in a whisper, as close as he dared to keep the others from overhearing, and tried not to sound like he was accusing Spock of something. "You don't fool me, Mr. Spock. I remember the day that your mother died. I've seen you at death's door, laughing in its face. I've practically held you in my arms while you swooned." He drifted as he spoke, his lower half bumping into Spock, hip to hip. Neither of them corrected. "I've seen you, the human and Vulcan you, alive with emotion. Where does that go? How can you pretend it isn't there?"

Spock did not become angry, as McCoy half expected him to. He looked thoughtful, and was quiet for a long time. 

"Where I come from," Spock said at last, "it is one's actions that tells others how he regards them, and how he feels about a given situation, not the set of his features or tone of his voice. A smile, a frown, these things may be untrue. Actions do not lie, Doctor."

Even as he said it he reached out to assist McCoy who had bumped his head on the ceiling, and pulled him back down, hands steady and warm. "And I have never swooned," he added. 

McCoy shook his head and might have argued but the static on the radio startled all of them.

 _Enterprise to Galileo Seven, do you read?_ Uhura's signal was choppy but clear enough.

Four of the crew cheered. Spock touched the console and replied serenely, "Affirmative, Enterprise. Five to beam up, double time if possible." 

He turned from the console and looked around. Everyone looked at him with expectation, relief, excitement. 

McCoy cleared his throat and nudged him. "Say something encouraging, Mr. Spock," he whispered.

Spock blinked. "Congratulations," he said flatly. "We are being rescued."

The crew was silent. McCoy rolled his eyes.  
___

"I can't believe I almost got married again," McCoy said and shivered.

They were the only two in med bay. The lights were dimmed for gamma shift, and McCoy lay on a biobed, swaddled in blankets as the treatment for his Xenoploycethemia coursed through his veins like ice.

"Perhaps it was the illness," Spock suggested. He adjusted the machinery that administered the drug which he had synthesized himself. McCoy watched him. Wondered why he was still there at all.

"Yeah, maybe," he said, when Spock caught him watching.

"Your tone suggests that you do not entirely agree with your own statement."

"Your tone suggests that you agree entirely with yours."

Spock smirked. He did that sort of thing a lot around McCoy these days. "You are deflecting. Is it possible, Doctor, that a mate, long term companionship, would be agreeable to you even without the threat of imminent death?"

"Spock, my last marriage _was_ the threat of imminent death," McCoy tried to joke, but an icicle hit him in the gut and he pulled the blankets closer around him. Spock tucked them even tighter, leaning over him in the dim light, then stood and adjusted the environmental controls.

"If you do not wish to discuss the matter," he said when he returned, "I will leave you to finish the treatment alone."

"No, wait," McCoy said, and reached out, upsetting the covers. Spock's wrist, when he grabbed it, was hot to the touch, probably only because McCoy felt so cold, but for an instant he considered pulling Spock under the covers with him. Instead he released him. "You're…" he couldn't say 'right', not to Spock, "you're not wrong. But partners don't exactly grow on trees, you know."

"One hopes not. Unless one is a plant."

McCoy rolled his eyes and withdrew his hand back to his own relative warmth. "What I'm saying is, who wants to go galavanting across the galaxy for years at a time with a surly old space doctor who drinks more than he should and can hardly string two kind words together at once."

"You are not old," Spock said.

"I appreciate that that's the detail you argue against."

"I have heard you say many kind things to patients, to the Captain, even to myself."

"Yeah, well, I must have been having an off day."

"Bad habits may be curtailed in the resulting happiness of a favorable match."

"Says you."

"As for any sort of galavanting, perhaps someone in the Fleet would not be bothered by such travels. Perhaps even someone on the Enterprise."

The way that he said it, well… if his tone had been softer, or if he had touched McCoy just then… from anyone else McCoy would have assumed….

"I guess," McCoy said, and cleared his throat. The chill in him felt more like a fever now.Sometimes people dying of hypothermia would strip down to nothing, betrayed by confused nerve endings. Spock could do that to someone too. "I mean… you just let me know when you find 'em."

Spock did smile. McCoy thought that he did. Then they sat quietly in the half dark until McCoy couldn't stand the silence and tried again to lighten the mood.

"You're just glad I didn't stay behind to die and decrease the efficiency of the ship," he said, smiling, but Spock still said nothing, just watched McCoy with an unreadable expression, eyes so dark and soft. Maybe it said something about McCoy that Spock being nice to him was harder to handle than nearly dying. After a moment, McCoy closed his eyes at last. It was a relief. 

"I'm pretty tired, Spock. Maybe…"

"Of course, Doctor." 

When Spock was gone McCoy watched the ceiling, every sound in the room, sounds he had not even noticed moments before, grew louder, the hum of machinery, of the ship, roared in his ears. 

"No way," he whispered to himself, and tried to believe it.  
____

The primary was as bright as the Earth sun on a clear central Georgia afternoon, but without the intense heat. Just warm enough. As warm as a bed in a cold house, as warm as a lover next to him in the morning. As warm as Spock's lips on his throat.

McCoy leaned against what looked like an oak tree, looked up through the leaves to the bright spaces between them.

"Doctor," Spock said to get his attention, his voice breathy and soft so close, tickling his neck, hands on McCoy's waist, pulling him closer. 

"Leonard," McCoy said, pushed Spock away just far enough to look at him, dark eyes, red lips, pale skin just a few shades too cool to be human. How had they gotten here? "Call me Leonard now," he said instead of asking Spock that very question, and kissed him again. Spock tasted like peaches. No, like peach cobbler, and that was a damned strange thing for a man to taste like, but it reminded McCoy of home, and, in a way, so did Spock now.

"Leonard," Spock said when he could speak again and the sound of it was comforting. The heat of him too, the lean body pressed solid against his, was a balm to his senses. The wind smelled sweet, the ground soft when Spock laid him down on it, even the rocks in his back were welcome somehow.

"Isn't this incredible?" he said to the sky, to no one in particular. Spock answered.

"It is a sensation like no other I have known," he said, looking down at McCoy, face darkened against the bright sky above, but McCoy could see the earnestness there, the desperation. With the sun shining on them McCoy could also see little flecks of something in Spock's hair, a yellow dusting of powder. He thought that he should be concerned by it, but when he tried to brush it away he breathed it in, Spock, too, and he let out a laugh at the absurdity of anything being wrong here, in this place, with Spock. 

Spock smiled at him, touched his face with such tenderness that McCoy's breath caught in his throat, and McCoy wriggled beneath him, trying to find satisfaction.

"How can you be so calm, Spock?" 

"I assure you, Doctor--"

"Leonard."

"--Leonard, I have never been more acutely affected by anything in my life."

"And yet…" McCoy said and pushed his groin up against Spock's. Spock smiled again, understanding.

"For Vulcans, the erection is not involuntary. We will it at need."

McCoy pulled Spock down to him once more, black hair hot from the sun, silken between his fingers, that sweet peach cobbler taste of him and the heavy weight of his body, and slid one hand between them, between skin and science blues.

" _I_ need it, Spock," he said, a whisper, "let me feel you."

Spock made a sound McCoy thought he'd never hear and hid his face in McCoy's neck, breath warm again at his throat, cock suddenly hard in McCoy's hand, and hot, so hot, under that benevolent sun.

"Incredible," McCoy said again, his hand and Spock moving in time, teeth on his throat, not biting, but there, a whimper, his own, Spock's, both. "Unbelievable," he said also.

"Doctor," Spock said.

"Leonard," McCoy corrected again, and Spock gave a surprised sound, only loud because it was right by McCoy's ear, breathing hard and heavy, and McCoy's hand, when he pulled it away, was sticky and sweet.

Spock collapsed next to him, rolled onto his back, squinting in the bright light. McCoy watched him, wanted to roll over closer, but he had that feeling again. Spock must have, too, because when he turned to McCoy he frowned with confusion. 

"This is all very surprising," he said.

_Doctor McCoy._

Something called to him. It wasn't Spock.

_Enterprise to McCoy. This is Kirk--answer me, Bones!_

"Should I?" he asked, either himself or Spock and Spock shrugged.

The communicator was no longer on his hip. He'd thrown it to the ground when it got in the way of climbing trees. 

...climbing trees? Did they, really?

He found it at the base of the oak lookalike. He leaned against it. Spock still lay in the sun, basking like a cat. He'd found a flower and was pulling petals off of it. McCoy smiled at him, considered crawling back over and--

_Enterprise to McCoy, come in, Dr. McCoy!_

McCoy rolled his eyes and hit the transmit button on the communicator. "Yeah, Jim, what?"

After they were all back on the ship, after they were all back to their senses, after Spock beamed back aboard and smiled at McCoy before McCoy dosed him with an antihistamine, and after Spock had sobered, looking confused and then hurt and then just like Spock again, McCoy told him he didn't remember a thing.

They stood in his quarters. Spock had come to see him there. 

"Last thing I remember was running medicals on the farmers. Damnedest thing," he said, and poured himself a brandy. He did not look at Spock. He did not even face him. He didn't think that he could lie to him otherwise.

"I see," Spock said, standing straight and tall in McCoy's periphery. He probably had those hands behind his back. He was probably frowning in that way that Spock did not really frown and yet always did a little.

"But you know," McCoy said, finding some papers to straighten on his desk, "if I said anything, or did something that you… if there was anything--"

"No," Spock said curtly, and McCoy thought that he would argue. He looked at him at last without even meaning to. The Berthold rays had given Spock a considerable tan, but otherwise there was no sign in his face of what had occured on the planet. "No," he repeated, "I understand perfectly, Doctor," and turned on one heel and left.

McCoy sat on his bed, set the locks on his door, and watched the liquid in his glass disappear, and refill, and disappear again.  
_______

They had flipped the switch, Spock in that light-tight box with a parasite clamped onto every nerve in his body, clenched teeth and clenched fists, determined not to succumb to the pain that would have killed a normal man. When the test was over and Spock came out he stumbled, but it wasn't from pain.

 _Take care of him, Bones,_ Jim had said, and left them alone together.

They were no longer in medbay. McCoy had kept him there only long enough for initial tests to confirm what Spock knew; that the parasite was dead, being absorbed by his body, and that he was blind. Instead he had led Spock to his quarters, where the familiar surroundings and scents might help him be at ease, however outwardly calm he appeared, and where crewmembers wouldn't gawk at their commander running into things.

McCoy stayed with him, though, hunched over his PADD making inquiries to the top eye surgeons in the Sol system and Vulcan. In the heat of everything, seeing Spock in such pain, working together to find out how to kill the alien parasite, he had quite forgotten the guilt he harbored over what had happened on Ceti III, but in the quiet warmth of Spock's room, Spock silent and still, meditating in the corner, he remembered all too well.

He sat at Spock's desk, as far across the room as possible while still being in the room. He cleared his throat. "There's been great advances in total eye transplants by someone named, uh, Tee-mock-ee-owl-east, uh, essh, anyway, whoever he is, he's Vulcan."

" _Teh-mast_ , is how you would pronounce it, Doctor," Spock said from his place on a pile of pillows without opening his eyes. The lights were low. Spock didn't need them. McCoy hadn't seen the point in bringing them up brighter just for himself.

"That's a lot of unnecessary consonants," he murmured to himself, then, "Apparently the trick is finding a suitable donor. But I don't even think we'll need it. This Frenchman on Earth, he's developed a nerve stimulation technique that's had a forty-eight percent success rate over--"

"Doctor," Spock said softly.

"I know, I know, forty-eight doesn't sound so hot--"

"That is not necessary, Doctor."

"Why, you know somebody better?"

"I do not."

McCoy's jaw clenched reflexively, biting back a comment he'd regret. Maybe he deserved whatever Spock could throw at him. 

He definitely did.

"Well, then…" he said with forced calm, "there's always ocular implants. Micro cameras in the eye connected directly to the brain that send all the same data, only without the depth perception. You'll never be a pilot, but--"

"You misunderstand," Spock said, "none of this is necessary."

McCoy waited for something, anything else, an explanation. None came, only the quiet of the room.

"Well what the hell does that mean?" he said at last. So much for holding his tongue. "You don't need help? You don't want help? You've got another plan to get your goddamn vision back? You want me to leave you alone? What, Spock?"

"That is not what I meant, Doctor," Spock said, voice softening in contrast to McCoy's. He had opened his eyes at last, though he saw nothing. "I mean that my injury is not your responsibility, nor your fault. I took the risk with full knowledge of the dangers, I designed the test alongside you. I accept the consequences."

McCoy stood, the anger he'd been very poorly hiding was threatening to burst out of him. "Well I don't!"

Spock shrugged. Actually shrugged. "Your acceptance is irrelevant, it is fact."

McCoy paced at his place by the desk. He wanted to walk over there and snatch Spock up and shake him, hold him, he didn't know which. Maybe both. His eyes were hot, his throat tight.

"I shouldn't have let you in that room without eye protection," he said, voice shaky.

"It was my choice."

"But it's my responsibility to protect my patients!" He was shouting. He stopped pacing, swallowed thickly and tried to breathe. "Do no goddamn harm," he all but whispered, "and look at you."

McCoy could hear Spock moving before he saw it, watched him stand effortlessly, walk confidently toward McCoy and reach out. McCoy let himself be found as Spock grasped his forearm, to hold him in place, or to know where he was, McCoy wasn't sure.

"I know that you would not intentionally harm me, Doctor," Spock said, his pupils dark and wide up close. He squeezed McCoy's arm. 

"But I have. And not for the first time."

Spock frowned. "To what do you refer?"

The environmental controls kicked in just then and started piping in more warmth. It was too much for McCoy, Spock so close, the heat of the room, the guilt choking him. He turned Spock and sat him down in the desk chair he'd been using, and stepped away.

"On the colony. The pollen," he said, as if that said everything. 

Spock blinked several times, the only thing betraying anything less than calm. "I thought you did not remember the events on Omicron Ceti III."

McCoy scrubbed at his face as he continued the short walk back and forth across Spock's quarters. He was sweating. "Of course I do. You know I do, Spock. No one else suffered memory loss. But I couldn't face you after what I'd done."

"What did you do?"

"I took advantage of you, Spock. I--christ, you must hate me."

Spock's brows drew together in confusion. "Are you referring to our sexual encounter?"

"Of course, what the hell else?" McCoy stopped pacing at last, he knelt before Spock, touched his knee gingerly, then took his hand away and sat back on his haunches, uncertain of what else to do. "I am sorry, Spock."

Spock sighed. He didn't seem upset, more… annoyed. "Your apology is not accepted, Doctor. We were both affected by the same toxin. Has it not occurred to you that perhaps it is I who took advantage of you?"

McCoy blinked, searched Spock's face for anything besides total seriousness, then laughed, sobered, and was angry again. "No. It hasn't. You wouldn't--you couldn't! You're Vulcan! And I'd wanted…" he looked down. He hated to even think of it, but he was glad that Spock could not see him just then. "I mean, for a long time… hell…."

"Why do you presume that because I am Vulcan I cannot have desires which I may act upon in favorable circumstances?"

"I don't know, because you're… you're Spock. You wouldn't do that to me, to anyone."

"But I did, Doctor."

McCoy looked up again. "Are you saying…" he hesitated for longer than he meant to, he couldn't ask it, but he had to know, "that you _wanted_...?"

Spock reached out. His hand landed on McCoy's shoulder. After a moment McCoy covered it with his own.

"Yes," Spock said simply.

"Only then? On the planet?" McCoy asked.

"And now," Spock said, his fingers warm and soft when they touched McCoy's face, and McCoy kissed his hand. He felt suddenly dizzy. He was glad he was already on his knees. Then Spock leaned forward, and McCoy leaned to meet him.

"Doctor?" Spock said before they kissed.

"Yes, Spock?"

"I see now."

McCoy swallowed his anticipation, his breath mingling with Spock's between them."You mean that you understand that… that I...?"

"I mean literally that my vision has returned."

McCoy leaned back sharply to let his own eyes focus on Spock's which did seem to track him. "What the devil?" He was on his feet and back with an opthalmoscope in an instant, shining into one and then the other of Spock's eyes. 

"Normal pupillary response," he murmured to himself, then stepped back and held up his hand. "How many fingers?"

"Humans typically have ten total."

McCoy practically growled with frustration, ordered the lights up to full brightness. "I mean how many am I holding up, Spock? Now's not the time for--"

"Three, Leonard," Spock said, and stood. He took McCoy's hand again. "I have just recalled a vestigial Vulcan feature which I had quite forgotten. An inner eyelid, which was once used to shield against the intense brightness of the Vulcan primary."

"Just now?... _Just now_ you remember?" McCoy practically screeched.

"Most Vulcans now do not possess the feature. As it had never presented itself, I assumed neither did I."

"But you do."

"Apparently."

"And you can see?"

"I can see, Leonard. And also I understand."

McCoy gaped, then laughed, feeling light-headed with emotion. No wonder Spock preferred to keep them at bay. He leaned in once more for that kiss.

"However," Spock said, and McCoy sighed.

"What now?" 

"We do currently have a population of colonists in need of assistance and no time to spare for lovemaking."

"God, say that again."

"We do currently have a population--"

"I meant the part about… nevermind," McCoy said, and pulled Spock by the hand. "C'mon, Commander. Let's go save the planet."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the emo drama at the end there, folks. Thanks for sticking with it! Happy New Year!


End file.
